How Much of our Consciousness is Collective?

Many of our readers are familiar with the idea of “social consciousness” which describes a sort of general mindset in a population. It is one of the strongest binds we have with other people on this earthly plane. It is also a “un-consciousness” which has us running on autopilot along with the crowds. It makes us want to fit in with everyone else.

But we also have our separate, individual consciousness which is made up of all the experiences we have had in our life, plus a lot of what we have brought with us into this life. This is the mind that can free us from the unconscious social-approval world we often inhabit. It is the place where we say, even if the whole world is against us, “This is my Truth!”. And then we live it.

I got off on this binge because the wonderful writer of the blog “Travels of a Dream Walker“ has addressed this issue in a recent post in which she grapples with the idea of the collective consciousness. She often makes me think deeper about things. Here is an excerpt:

I now seem to understand that our individual consciousness is not just our own perceptions, but also what we have assimilated through a multitude of levels of other ‘collective consciousnesses’, from the smaller family and societal level consciousness, to larger religious and cultural consciousness that also make up our individual realities. This is very difficult to explain, but the idea was that there were many more levels of influence out there than just the two I had thought.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in a comment, and put a comment on Karen659’s blog as well.